


All That Freedom is Gonna Be the Ruin of Me

by fourtenpm



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2019-07-20 07:02:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16132094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourtenpm/pseuds/fourtenpm
Summary: Tim's mother issue.





	1. Chapter 1

Tim spotted Mother the moment he walked in the restaurant. She sat at a table by the window reading something decidedly not the menu. Knowing Mother, Tim was pretty sure she had known what to order before she set foot in here. 

She didn't look a day older than he had last seen her, as polished as ever, and she had the US Marshal Service dress code to thank for for him not showing up in his army fatigue. Tim thought without much feeling. He had become an expert of feeling vacant when it came to Mother at a tender young age. So it was with this vacant preparation for everything to come that Tim approached the table. 

Mother sensed him, looked up, and froze. Tim could tell that she was holding her breath, and her eyes went round ever so slightly--imperceptible, if not for his combined military and law enforcement training--in panic. 

"Tim, Jesus!" She remembered to breath a split of second later when she realized it was just her son, "You look exactly like your father!" And therein laid Tim’s cardinal sin with Mother. The resemblance to the man who fathered him. The man they both hated.

"Mother." Tim answered. 

Mother motioned for him to sit and signaled for the waiter to take order. A middle aged man in a smart suit materialized with two menus, Mother waved the menus away and said: "I will have your spring salad with pine nuts, and he will have the steak, medium."

If the man was taken aback, he hid it well. He wrote the orders down with an amiable smile and inquired: “Anything to drink?” 

Mother said: “Yes, an Evan Williams, twenty-three year, neat, and a soda.” Tim recognized and accepted their long-standing eating-out arrangement: Mother would order for them both, and Tim would eat and drink whatever was put down in front of him, input from him unnecessary and unwanted. But this time, Mother stopped in her track here, turned her eyes to him, as if asking his opinion. Tim even noticed a tiny twitch around her eyes that was a close imitation of embarrassment, which was alien on Mother--she had always been meticulous, efficient, and composed. Embarrassment was not something Tim would ever thought possible with Mother, nor would he expect Mother to inquire his likes and dislikes, per their long-standing life arrangement. Tim filed all these new things away for when he’d have time to mull it over, waved a hand, said: “Soda is fine. I am working.” 

The drinks were served in heavy glasses. Mother picked up hers with both hands. They were shaking the tiniest bit. Tim considered all the reasons why Mother would be so shaken that she needed a stiff drink to calm her nerves. He wondered if that had anything to do with the trip he did not have to take with skills and a loaded weapon after basics. But it was all irrelevant now, he decided and looked at Mother’s hands. They were large for a woman, with long and bony fingers. They were strong and steady. A surgeon’s hands. 

“You have really steady hands! You want to be a surgeon like your mom?” He remembered someone had said that to him. The voice was warm, kind, casually affectionate. He dredged his memory and fished out a name. 

“So, how is BaoMan?” 

“Excuse me, who?”

“BaoMan, the woman who used to work for you?”

“Oh, she is doing well. She went back to her home country, head of her department now.” Mother sipped her bourbon, which might be the only reason why she continued, “Sam, her son, lives in California now. He is working on a startup, married, expecting a second child.”

Tim glanced sharply at Mother, “Something must be wrong with Mother” the thought came to him unbidden. This was almost a normal conversation, which was something they had never done. Mother would have been annoyed if she had to say more than two sentences to him at one time, and he had learnt to be quiet around her. 

Then Mother frowned, looking at Tim without seeing him, thinking back on how he had intruded in her carefully partitioned work life, the one she hold the most dear, built a fortress for, wall, moat and all... “Oh, you have met them.”

“Yeah. Once.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tim would always look back at meeting BaoMan fondly. It felt like a few lifetimes ago, and time past had colored it warm and soft, things that Tim did not really trust in his life. But he was fond of them nonetheless. Tim was in the third grade on the day when a no-school new holiday sneaked up on Mother. He remembered Mother’s frantic calls to all his regular and occasional sitters and her resigned annoyance when she realized she’d have to take him with her to work, because she had a surgery scheduled and absolutely could not be late. 

The silence on the way to Mother’s work was crushing, and Tim could feel a little beast with sharp claws in his chest growing. It would eventually grow to be a ferocious thing, bloodthirsty, content only when violence was imminent. 

Mother worked in a huge building that she navigated at a brisk pace with confidence. Tim jogged after her, following the loud clicks of her heels in hallways that felt like a maze. When Mother finally opened a door and marched in, Tim was absolutely certain he'd be lost in the building without a guide. Tim squeezed in before the heavy door could close in his face and entered Mother's domain. The room was large, with rows of long working benches and shelves that were stuffed to full capacity on them. The shades were half drawn to block the morning sun from large windows, and there were mismatched pots on the windowsill with big and small plants in them. Despite the fact that this was Mother's workspace, Tim also felt this room was more lived-in than their house, which, years later, Tim would realize in a drunken epiphany that he had never thought of the house as his home. 

Someone were already in the room. As the heavy door closed behind him with a dull thud, he heard a woman said with laughter in her voice: “OK OK, I love you too, now go away.” Tim peeked from behind Mother's back and saw a plumb Asian woman and the back of a retreating boy. She waved at Mother with a finger, said: "Morning," casually, then added, "the hospital called. I told them you will be in the office in 10, and that," she squinted at the clock hanging on the wall, "was 15 minutes ago." Mother sighed heavily, said: "Can you do me a favor and drop him off at the office? I can't get a sitter for today." The woman said: "Why do you want me to drop… Tim, right?" the woman turned to look at Tim, addressing him directly. Tim nodded. She turned her eyes back to Mother, continued, "Drop Tim off at the office? His father is picking him up?" Mother shook her head, said: "I am also going to ask you to ask Rose to keep an eye on him…" The woman rolled her eyes at Mother, said: "Why? Rose is manning the office all by herself today, I don't think she'd be able to. I have Sam here, they can play together. I will take care of him." Mother hesitated, said: "Are you sure? I don't want to impose…" She was interrupted by the shrill beeping of her beeper, and almost the same time, the phone range. The woman said: "Don't worry about it! It will be fine, and it will be fun for the boys!" Mother smiled at the woman genuinely. Young as he was, Tim understood the significance of a true smile and the lack of it in their house. And the loss of something that he never knew existed.

Mother threw a quick instruction of "listen to BaoMan" and was gone in a flurry. The woman approached him, dropped down to his eye level, holding out a hand, and said: "Hi, Tim, I am BaoMan. I work for your mom."


End file.
